The Source has released a list of DC collected books for fall 2010, including the second volume of The Flash Chronicles.
THE FLASH CHRONICLES VOL. 2 TP
Writer: John Broome
Artists: Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, Murphy Anderson and others
Collects: THE FLASH #107-112
$14.99 US, 160 pg
DC has three series of books reprinting the Silver Age Flash starting from the beginning:
- Showcase Presents: The Flash – big, cheap black-and-white collections on newsprint, typically 500-600 pages for $20.
- The Flash Archives – hardcover, high-quality reprints on good paper, typically around 200 pages for around $50 (though you can usually find them for $30-35 online).
- The Flash Chronicles – typical trade paperback, around 160 pages for $15.
The Archives are up to 5 volumes and reprint issues through #141 (1963). Showcase Presents… is up to 3 volumes, reprinting through #161 (1966). This new volume will bring the Chronicles up to about halfway through The Flash Archives vol.2.
In an unrelated note, have you seen this Flash parody t-shirt? [Edited for link formatting]
Good one! It reminds me a bit of this Fred Hembeck comic strip.
I bought the first volume of the Showcase collection and the first volume of the Flash Chronicles. I like the Chronicles better, mainly because they are in color. I find it makes the stories easier to read, and I don’t have to worry about the black ink from the “newspaper” type of paper used in the Showcase volumes. If I have the money for it I’ll pick up Chronicles vol. 2.
So, does this mean Showcase Flash Vol. 4 is not going to come out? I’ve noticed that we get a Flash Showcase every year in the summer.
I’ve said this before, but how come is it every time we get some progress on collecting all of the silver age Flash back issues, DC just starts over. You get 4 or 5 volumes into archives- bam, Showcase. 3 volumes into Showcase – bam Chronicles. DC is only interested in re-releasing material that has already been made available. That frustrates me to no end.
Good question. They do have some new Showcase volumes on the list, so I guess they aren’t completely dropping the format, but they can’t seem to get past the early 1960s with the Flash. It would be nice if they actually finished one of the “complete” collections at some point!
You’d think around now would be a good time to reprint some of those old Professor Zoom stories, and maybe later on a Trial of the Flash series.
I have five words to add – MORE GOLDEN AGE FLASH ARCHIVES!
Hear, hear!
On the plus side, DC is releasing new Golden Age archives for Superman and Batman, so they haven’t completely abandoned the era…but then DC seems to be trying to present Barry Allen as the original Flash.
The Archives line has retracted noticeably in the past 2-3 years.
And the Golden Age archives for the “predecessors” line (Hawkman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc.) has pretty much stalled. They published GA Flash Vol. 1in 1999, and apparently stalled production on Vol. 2 for several years before it finally saw print in 2006. The GA Green Lantern archives stalled in 2002, and no more are planned.
Part of the reason for the suspenion of the line is higher restoration costs than the SA material, and also lower sales. And now even the “main” Archive lines are suffering in sales too, hence the expansion of the Chronicles line.
Heck, I’d be happy with Showcase Presents: The Golden Age Flash, as long as they actually finished it. I’m sure restoration costs would be cheaper if they’re only doing it in black and white, and they could cover the entire Flash run in Flash Comics, All-Flash and Comic Cavalcade in just six volumes of Showcase. (I did the math a while back for a post I haven’t quite finished yet.)
$120 for the entire run vs. $50+ per issue for more than 150 issues.
For someone like me, who just wants to read the stories, that’s a fantastic deal. And of course DC gets a cut of the Showcase money. They’ll never see a dime of the money I spend on back-issues.
I’d buy that in a heartbeat too. But the reason the Showcase line exists is because they already did the B/W restoration for the Archive lines, which is where DC makes back most of their initial investment in restoration.
So the Showcase / Chronicles lines represent a low-cost double-dip, where DC can make a nice profit even at a low pricepoint. For a GA Flash Showcase volume to work, the cost of a Showcase would triple / quadruple (maybe more), since the GA stuff doesn’t sell in the same ballpark as the SA-and-beyond material.
It’s really a big, bad catch 22: DC’s material from before the 50s requires a lot of cleanup, and doesn’t sell as well as the post-50s stuff. The books from after the 60s can easily be found in GREAT shape, but between royalty costs and the availability of back issues, there isn’t a cost model that works for that, either.
For all these reasons, I’m never going to get a Golden Age Aquaman Archives, or a Green Arrow Archives. It’s a shame.